Free Republic

One of the things that needs to be removed from the discussion of Ron Paul's views of foreign policy is a false equivalence that has become something of a meme in these discussions. It is a false equivalence, not because there could never be an equivalence, but rather because it is being assumed to be an automatic equivalence. Read more...

Are pro-life advocates guilty of moral compromise when they support incremental laws aimed at limiting the evil of elective abortion? For example, when Texas passed a bill requiring abortionists to offer ultrasounds to any women considering abortion, most pro-lifers applauded the legislation. After all, studies show that women who see their unborn offspring via ultrasound overwhelmingly reject abortion. There's no doubt the legislation will save lives. Yet not all pro-lifers agree with an incremental approach. Some view ultrasound legislation, parental consent legislation, and partial-birth abortion bans as a gigantic permission slip to kill unborn humans provided you jump through a...

Pro-Abortion Fingerprints on HHS Mandate Jay Sekulow Filed in:ObamaCare 3:28 PM Feb. 16, 2012  Here's a shocker. In drafting the infamous contraception regulation, and the subsequent compromise, there apparently was little or no input from the pro-life community, but plenty of guidance from the pro-abortion crowd. Amazing.As you know, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its mandate, requiring religious institutions, such as religious schools and hospitals, to include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception in their insurance policies for employees. A so-called "accommodation" was then issued. The fact is both the mandate and compromise violate the deeply held...

Rights: The House Minority Leader says self-insurance is no protection against the government's contraceptive mandate, while California's junior senator says people have a right to be insured but no right to practice their faith. Lost in the phony "compromise" on the Health and Human Services mandate on religious institutions being forced to pay for contraceptive services was the fact that many such institutions are self-insured. So making insurance companies pay instead is a distinction without a difference. Sometimes these religious institutions are their own insurance company. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once complained that her fellow Catholics had this...

WASHINGTON, February 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common? All these pioneers of what some call the culture of death rooted their beliefs and actions in Darwinism - a little-known fact that one conservative leader says shouldn’t be ignored. Hugh Owen of the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation told an audience on Capitol Hill before the March for Life last month that the philosophical consequences of Darwinism has “totally destroyed many parts of our society.” Owen pointed to Dr. Josef Mengele,...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., Feb. 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Recently Facebook apologized for censoring a post by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts in which she gave instructions for a do-it-yourself chemical abortion. The popular social media site decided it was okay for the international abortion provider to teach women and girls how to do an abortion themselves at home using Misoprostol, even telling them to lie to a pharmacist to get the necessary drugs. But now Facebook has removed a graphic that shows the aftermath of an abortion: An eight-week fetus torn limb from limb and decapitated. This week, Bryan Kemper, Youth...

The Argentine authorities were either unwilling or unable to bring Nazi war criminals to justice even when they had them in custody, archives made public for the first time today show. The archives on five Nazi war criminals that were made available by Argentina show a pattern that confirms what many have said for years, that war criminals found a safe haven here and that this country was probably one of the easiest in which to disappear and escape justice. Last week, President Carlos Saul Menem ordered the files opened and gave Government agencies 30 days to produce any they...

Rick Santorum backer Foster Friess raised more than a few eyebrows yesterday when he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that, back in his day, “they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptions. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.” Now — as Santorum tries to distance himself from Friess’ comment — the businessman has taken to his blog in order to explain that had been joking, as well as to apologize to anyone who may have been offended: After listening to the segment tonight, I can understand how I confused people with the way I worded the joke...

Covering something that comes out of Joy Behar's mouth makes one feel a little dirty. Analyzing Behar is like analyzing a Kardashian, only Behar isn't that smart. If science could somehow harness energy from the brainwaves that come out of this dolt's head, we might be able to light a small birthday candle. But trudge through the muck we must, to deliver such wisdom unto the masses... Via NewsBusters: The shrill, extremist comments coming from the co-hosts on The View continued, Thursday. Liberal comedienne Joy Behar trashed Virginia for passing abortion restrictions, saying the new law makes the state like...

The term "culture war" has been in the news lately, describing a shift in political focus from unemployment and taxes to birth control and gay marriage. Some say it's because the economy is improving (although we have a long way to go). Others, like me, say it's because it's a perennially important discussion that will never go away. But something peculiar is happening this election season: Instead of putting their moral cards out on the table, conservatives are couching their cultural crusades in the libertarian language of "big government" oppression. Take the latest fight over whether birth control will be...

LUFKIN, TEXAS, February 15, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Congressional investigation into Planned Parenthood that touched off the controversy over Susan G. Komen’s funding of the abortion giant may soon expand into a series of national hearings in the nation’s capital and court cases around the country that could expose hundreds of millions of dollars of financial impropriety, critics say. Karen Reynolds, a decade-long employee of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) in Texas, has filed a lawsuit claiming 12 Planned Parenthood mills in Texas and Louisiana bilked the government by billing medical agencies for services that were unnecessary or that were...

Missouri Synod President tells House Committee: LCMS ‘religiously opposed to supporting abortion-causing drugs’ST. LOUIS—February 16, 2012—The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the St. Louis-based Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, was one of several witnesses to give testimony today during the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s hearing, “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?” Following are Harrison’s comments to the committee: “Mr. Chairman, it’s a pleasure to be here. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is a body of some 6,200 congregations and 2.3 million members across the...

Attorneys general from a dozen states say they intend to sue over the Obama administration's contraception mandate that requires many religious employers to violate the teachings of their faith. In a Feb. 10 letter, the attorneys general voiced their “strong opposition” to the mandate, which they called “an impermissible violation of the Constitution's First Amendment virtually unparalleled in American history.” They said that if the mandate is implemented, they are prepared to “vigorously oppose it in court.” The letter was sent to the Department of Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebilius, Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner and Labor secretary Hilda...

The recent indignity by which the Obama administration wants to mandate everyone, including all Catholic institutions or their insurers, to pay for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, has raised the issue of Catholic teaching on these issues. Some commentators have mistakenly asserted that the Catholic ban on these practices only goes back to Humanae Vitae (On the Regulation of Birth), by Pope Paul VI in 1968, or as far back as Casti Connubii (Of Chaste Wedlock), by Pope Pius XI in 1931. The latter encyclical was written in response to the change of moral doctrine by the Anglican Church, which...

A Capitol Hill hearing that was supposed to be about religious freedom and a mandate that health insurers cover contraception in the United States began as an argument about whether Democrats could add a woman to the all-male panel. “Where are the women?” the minority Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked early in the hearing. She criticized the Republican committee chairman, Rep. Darrel Issa, for wanting to “roll back the fundamental rights of women to a time when the government thought what happens in the bedroom is their business.” “We will not be forced back to that primitive era,” she said. Issa...

On the measure's first day in the Senate after it cleared the House on Tuesday, abortion opponents rallied at the state Capitol to support House Bill 1, which would define life as beginning at conception. Nearly 100 people gathered Wednesday at Capitol Square's Bell Tower to advocate for the measure, wearing yellow scarves and carrying yellow balloons, along with "Support HB1" posters that depicted a fetus. The bill would impart the rights of "personhood" to a human embryo at the moment of conception, creating a civil cause of action for the wrongful death of an unborn child killed by the...

The first bill of the session passed by the Oklahoma Senate was an anti-abortion statement that life begins at the moment of conception, approved by senators Wednesday after two hours of debate. The practical effect of the bill is open to question. Its author, Sen. Brian Crain, R-Tulsa, said it's merely a statement that Oklahoma is “pro-life.” He labeled as fear mongering contentions by opponents that it could lead to restrictions on abortions, birth control, in vitro fertilization and stem cell research. The Personhood Act, Senate Bill 1433, received international attention in the wake of a proposed amendment from Sen....

I belong to a women's club (bit like Junior League AKA sorority for grown-ups) in our area where we raise money for various charities. We have normally given to the Komen Foundation in the past. Today, the President of the club said that we now are going to give to "Relay for Life" because of the controversy (thank God!) Does anyone know about this organization? Do they also contribute to the destruction of life? Someone in the meeting said they are tied to the American Cancer Society and that it was "OK"....but reading online.....not so much. Any insight, greatly appreciated.

LCMS President Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison will take part in a Capitol Hill hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington, D. C., on Thursday, Feb. 16. The hearing will focus on the issues of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience in relation to the Obama administration's recent health-care ruling regarding contraceptives. The panel also will include Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist and Jewish leaders. The Rev. John T. Pless, who teaches theological ethics and is an assistant professor of Pastoral Ministry and missions at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, and Ann Stillman, vice-president and general...

Imagine that you’re a politician. You know that a story is going to come out, and you know that the story will be damaging to your interests. You can’t control that. But you can control when the story comes out. How should you plan it?That’s easy. Arrange for the story to come out Friday evening. People don’t spend much time with the news on Saturday mornings. Many people won’t even notice the story; you may be able to bury it.OK, now imagine that you’re working in the Obama White House. You want a bit of a favorable “bump� when you...

Agency name Virginia Department of Health Virginia Administrative Code (VAC) citation 12VAC5-412 Regulation title Regulations for Licensure of Abortion Facilities Action title Establishes minimum standards for facilities performing five or more first trimester abortions per month.

Agency name Virginia Department of Health Virginia Administrative Code (VAC) citation 12VAC5-412 Regulation title Regulations for Licensure of Abortion Facilities Action title Establishes minimum standards for facilities performing five or more first trimester abortions per month.

SANTA ANA, California, February 15, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The young woman staggered out the back door of the abortion clinic. She barely managed to make her way to her car before she collapsed on the curb, sobbing uncontrollably. The year was 1980. Kathleen, in her early 20’s, had recently separated from her husband and had just aborted another man’s baby. In her time of crisis, Kathleen had turned for help to the only organizations she knew, Planned Parenthood and Family Planning Associates. The first gave her a pregnancy test, the other aborted her baby. As Kathleen doubled up from pain...

As physicians and Members of Congress we were deeply disappointed in President Obama’s new so-called “contraception mandate,” including his decision to coerce employers into providing coverage for medications that terminate human life.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Republican supermajority has muscled two of the most restrictive anti-abortion bills in years through the Virginia House, including one that would all but outlaw the procedure in the state by declaring that the rights of persons apply from the moment sperm and egg unite.

Oklahoma’s proposed anti-abortion Senate Bill 1433 states a fetus “at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.” In response, pro-choice Oklahoma State Senator Constance Johnson introduced an amendment......

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The son of one of the greatest defenders of Canadian unity, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, has stirred up a hornets' nest by speculating about backing Quebec separatism if the country moves too far right. Trudeau's 40-year-old son, Justin, now a Liberal member of Parliament, said in an interview with the French-language service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp on Sunday that he was enormously saddened by the direction of the country under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He said that at some point he might even back independence for his home province, French-speaking Quebec. Referendums in Quebec...

In 1849 and then again in 1852, the Catholic bishops of the United States petitioned the Holy See to grant the archbishops of Baltimore the title of “primate” of the Catholic Church in the United States: an honorific, to be sure, but one that implied that the head of America’s oldest Catholic diocese would enjoy a de facto preeminence as leader of American Catholicism. But the Vatican, nervous that an American “primate” would assert himself in some fashion against Rome, declined to bestow the title (although, interestingly, it didn’t cavil about the title “primate” being given to the archbishop of...

Today is the LAST DAY for public comment on the Clinic Safety bill, signed by Gov. McDonnell, to provide SOME level of regulation. Planned Parenthood has been sending emails to their minions and right now, the comments are 20 to 1 for the pro-abortion view. Please go to this site and enter CLINIC SAFETY STANDARDS as the subject, leave a message SUPPORTING the clinic safety bill that Gov. McDonnell signed. http://townhall.virginia.gov/L/Comments.cfm?stageid=6006 Prior to this, abortion clinics had very little regulation, the same as vet offices. Women have died in Virginia abortion clinics, when there is an emergency in the past,...

Urgent calls are needed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) and your two U.S. senators to urge them to support Amendment No. 1520 by Senator Roy Blunt (MO). This amendment would halt the Obama Administration’s new mandate requiring all employers—including religious employers—to violate their consciences and provide free birth control and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. Action Requested Please do three things: Call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) and urge him to allow the Senate to vote on Amendment No. 1520, the Blunt Amendment. You can reach Majority Leader Reid at 202-224-3542. Call your two U.S. senators and...

Reproductive decisions are sometimes influenced by the availability of contraceptives. But they are also influenced by culture, faith, the ups and downs that are a natural part of sexual relationships and impulses buried deep in our psyches. In other words, they are influenced by factors well beyond the purview of a government mandate.

Criminal charges against pro-life activist Peter D'Attilio thrown out by judge. Berates prosecutor for pursuing false charges! Civil Rights lawsuit coming up? ALSO: D'Attilio followed through courthouse by apparent government agent -- even listened to his conversations with lawyer. POSTED: February 13, 2012 A district court judge threw out the Franklin, MA police department's case against pro-life activist Peter D'Attilio, after sharply challenging the prosecutor regarding validity of the charges. At the hearing on Thursday, Feb. 9, in Wrentham District Court, Judge Stephen Ostrach berated the prosecutor for pursuing what were clearly false charges.

RUSH: I want to move on to this Dick Morris business and the attack on the Catholic Church last week by Obama. I want to ask you, if you remember back in January there was a presidential debate, a Republican debate in Manchester. Do you remember -- 'cause this is a setup for what's coming -- do you remember, we were all perplexed here. George Stephanopoulos kept hounding Romney on contraception. It had not come up, nobody had said anything about it, and we were all confused, as was Romney, what the deal was. Well, it is Dick Morris' theorem...

LCMS reacts to contraceptive mandate 'accommodation' Missouri Synod president says church remains ‘deeply concerned’ about health plan mandate despite White House statement ST. LOUIS—February 14, 2012—The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, issued a statement today in response to President Obama’s health plan “accommodation” for religious groups, which was announced last week: “In response to President Obama’s announcement Friday concerning an ‘accommodation’ to a previous mandate that health plans must cover all forms of birth control (even those that can kill the unborn), The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) remains deeply concerned. We strongly object to...

Thanks to an NYT story this weekend, this bit of old news has been resurrected, showcased yesterday in a Peter Robinson post at Ricochet and then picked up by Rush Limbaugh this afternoon. The key quote is six years old and appeared in a story in National Review so it’s been on the right’s radar since well before Romney’s first presidential run. And yet, much like the mandate, somehow he didn’t get much grief over it last time when he was running as the conservative in the race. Mr. Romney’s transformation on abortion is, in some respects, the story of...

February 14, 2012 (PriestsforLife.org) - Many have asked me whether I think that the President’s announced “accommodation” regarding the HHS mandate for health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization is acceptable. Absolutely not. As many Catholics and non-Catholics point out, the principal problem is that the mandate is still in place. The President’s February 10 announcement changed none of that. What remains is that all employers — not just religious ones — have to provide health insurance for their employees, and all health insurance plans have to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization. It’s a fiction to say...

The American bishops have, with alacrity, rejected President Obama's proposed "accommodation" on the contraception mandate in no uncertain terms. Their response came before the sun had set on the very day of his announcement. Noting that the "proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions," the Catholic hierarchy virtually guaranteed more political hemorrhaging for the White House. The bishops indicated that they were not consulted in advance of the President's announcement and had just received information about...

President Barack Obama’s right hand man said over the weekend that the revised mandate the administration put into place requiring insurance companies to distribute birth control and abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost is here to stay.The Obama administration has revised its controversial mandate that had forced religious employers to pay for health insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs like Plan B, the morning after pill, and ella that can cause abortions. The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost....

“I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice...I changed my position.” [Romney] answered a Planned Parenthood questionnaire by saying he backed “state funding of abortion services.” “It was made clear to him by advisers early on in his gubernatorial race that he had to be pro-choice...” “...my mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others...And you will not see me wavering on that.” Mr. Romney promised [Naral Pro-Choice America] to maintain the status quo...he surprised its leaders by...

February 13, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Opponents of the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate are rallying behind another White House petition that rejects the President’s recent revision and calls for a complete rescinding of the rule. A previous petition to abolish the rule, created in late January, had accused the Administration of attempting “to represent ‘transcendental truth’ on matters of conscience,” by forcing all employers, including Catholics and members of other pro-life denominations, to cover birth control and abortion-inducing drugs on their employee’s health plans. “That in itself is unprecedented, which is also why it is unconstitutional,” the petition charged. The...

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, February 13, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As politicians in both political parties debate Mitt Romney’s role in implementing a 2005 statute requiring Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts to dispense Plan B - an “emergency contraceptive” that studies and the pill’s manufacturer have suggested can cause early abortions - a leader in the state’s pro-life movement puts the blame squarely on the former governor. “The injury to the conscience rights of Catholic hospitals was not done so much so much by the church’s ideological enemies on the Left but by the Romney administration,” C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action...

Barack Obama may have just lost the election. He has foolishly gone to war in an election year with tens of millions of Catholics, Protestants and Jews – Democrat, Republican and independent alike. He has thrown down a radical feminist gauntlet and dared the Church to pick it up. They’ve picked it up. From running up trillions in debt and deficit, to the vast expansion of the size and scope of federal bureaucracy, Mr. Obama has done more in three years to supplant our 236 year-old Constitutional Republic with a Euro-style socialist autocracy – than a lesser Marxist could have...

This is the Obama’ who liberals fought for in 2008. This is Obama the brilliant one, the wise one, the just one, the master compromiser and most of all the ultimate voice of fairness’. In keeping his promise to feminists to force all employers to give their female employees free birth control drugs and devices through employee health insurance, via the Affordable Health care Act (aka Obama-care), he ran into opposition by the Catholic Church and Catholic leaders. Catholic objections to having their institutions being forced to give free birth control to their employees when they believe that using birth...

We showed President Obama’s health care mandate to be the intrusion into the free exercise of religion that it was, and we showed that his “compromise” was no compromise at all, but a wolf in compromise clothing. So, how did the president’s magnanimous gesture of healing go over through the weekend? Predictably, it flopped. At least among those serious about their faith...

Do you remember Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak? He was the rarest of rare birds, a pro-life, pro-gun Democrat who had the stones to stage a Custer’s last stand against the Pelosi/Obama health care bill in 2009. And for his trouble, former-Congressman Stupak got himself Custered. He objected to language in the Patient Protection and Affordability Act – ObamaCare – that would permit abortion funding and force religious charities to fund contraceptive services in contradiction to their beliefs. Nancy Pelosi refused to amend the bill’s language to explicitly ban abortion funding and to protect the freedom of religious charities from government...

It is common knowledge that more books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, our 16th President, than any other figure except Jesus Christ. With so much archeological attention directed toward him it is unlikely that much new factual material will surface about Mr. Lincoln. When taken as a whole, the in-depth forensic examinations of his writings, relationships, lineage, marriage, religion (or supposed lack thereof), evidence a complex and brilliant identity. An interesting phenomenon of the last twenty years, however, has been to place a contemporary lens over Lincoln. In recent writings, Lincoln has been gay, depressed, and now even a...

White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on Sunday defended President Barack Obama’s decision to relax a requirement that religious employers cover contraception in health plans, saying the president struck an appropriate balance and wasn’t open to further compromise. “I have to say that the solution that we came up with puts no religious institution in a position where it either has to pay for or facilitate the provision of benefits they find objectionable,” Mr. Lew said on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley. Mr. Lew said the president put out a solid plan, and when asked whether...

On January 20, 2012, the Obama administration announced a clarification – one of many – on its requirement that all insurance policies must cover contraceptives, sterilization, abortions, and abortion-causing drugs (such as RU-486). From the beginning, there had been a foolish assumption that Obamacare would not cover abortion – Bart Stupak and others even voted for it on the president’s commitment that it would not. As if anyone with an ounce of sense would ever believe that this president would ever take a position contrary to one of his party’s most dependable and key constituents, the abortion lobby. When, over...

Lew: Obama's latest stance on birth-control mandate final, puts issue to restBy Mike Lillis - 02/12/12 10:38 AM ET President Obama's new birth-control stance should put to rest the controversy over employer-sponsored contraception coverage, a top administration official said Sunday. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said Obama's new plan, unveiled Friday, effectively addresses "the core issue" of simultaneously ensuring religious freedom and women's access to healthcare. "It does not force an institution that has religious principle to offer or pay for benefits that they find objectionable, but it guarantees a women's right to access. We think that's the...